


A False Beyond

by Altonym



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1505681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altonym/pseuds/Altonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morrigan and Caradoc encounter spectres, while held in the sloth demon's snare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A False Beyond

Morrigan had just killed her mother.

Not the real one, of course, but the symbolism was pretty satisfying nonetheless. That slap stung, though. She had never felt sensation as keen as that in the Fade before. A powerful demon, then, or perhaps just a reflection of a solid hold over their perceptions. This was not the shapeless quagmire she was used to, chopped up by the competing wills of many demons at once. This was sustained fantasy - or an attempt at it, at least.

Gods, Flemeth as a kind old biddy. T'was enough to send shivers up the spine. Even if it had been a good reconstruction, shapeshifting had always seemed to be a defence in the Fade. Morrigan understood the forms of things, and could tell when they were off. She could never become as her mother, of course, but she had learned to study body language. Flemeth never ingratiated with her movements; they were sharp and effectual, and Morrigan had always striven to imitate them.

 _Where am I, though?_ A part of this demon's realm within the fade, of course, but she needed a door - an escape. First, though, the others. She had no doubt Alistair would be having a bloody tea party in his head somewhere, possibly Wynne too - in Morrigan's experience, the old were especially susceptible within the Fade; there were always regrets, a longer history of sadnesses for the demons to pick at.

No, her priority must be Caradoc. The plane she was on seemed to approximate the area around Flemeth's hut, which annoyed her. It meant the demon had accessed her mind, however fleetingly. It was, as with all things in the Fade, wrong. This demon favoured purples, yellows and calm deep blues - the colours of royalty, of luxury and repose. This led her to guess sloth demon. Sometimes purple meant desire demon, but always reddish purple, close to pink. Rage demons favoured red, Hunger demons sickly greens and yellows. Pride demons liked white and black, stark colours.

The hut had been rendered here in five stories. Each story had more doors than windows, ranging from huge stone gateways to tiny shrunken doors within the doorhandles of other doors. Each of the doors had keys in them, some constantly rotating, some flickering back and forth, some continually making that satisfying unlocking sound. _Find the door without a key. Where the demon doesn't want me to go._ The trick to the Fade was realising that though it was a demon's home, it was also their mind too. You could break the rules, cheat at the game, force the demon to alter its own consciousness in order to satisfy whatever rudimentary logic it had enforced. One attempted, almost like a somniari, to reforge the surrounding plane. It didn't always work, but it was fun trying.

She stepped over the sadly fictional corpse of her mother and searched around the hut, wading in rosewater that smelled of vegetable stew. _All the smells and sights I associate with relaxation. With satiation. 'Tis definitely a sloth demon._ A few times she believed she saw a door without a key, only to find it no longer there. She chased circles around the hut three or four times before it occurred to her.

 _I'm still playing the game. Break the rules._ She cleared her throat, nodded a little, clicked out her shoulders and set her childhood home on fire. The smell was delicious and satisfying, like roasting meat on a hot flame. But it was not real.

The hut burned too quickly - after a couple of minutes Morrigan was satisfied, and cooled what was left with cold water vapour. The entire wooden superstructure had burned to a crisp and collapsed, except for the wooden archway that, had it been in the real hut, would have marked the threshold to her bedroom. Very subtle.  
She stepped through, a little disappointed. What greeted her on the other side was nothing short of spectacular.

It was a forest, again chopped into many pieces by the non-reality of the Fade; or, she supposed, the Beyond, because this was surely the spirit realm of the Dalish. The trees formed curves that were too smooth, as though they had been drawn by a child. They were ungnarled, almost polished looking. The foliage grew in big, round, regular tufts, and everywhere the sound of songbirds lured.

Morrigan was sure she could hear water, the background sussurance of a river flow, but wherever she turned she heard it as if behind her. Strange creatures flitted between the alien trees - mangled attempts at the halla, she supposed, sometimes wolves in that same childish style.

She followed the path before her; she would play the demon's game until it brought her to her friend, and not a moment longer. As she walked, she could not help but think that if one was to get lost in the Fade, this was surely the most pleasant part. She wondered vaguely if this was really how the forest felt to her friend - if this was the picture his consciousness painted. It had all the beauty of her own memories, those of the Korcari Wilds.

Strange flowers grew by the wayside, and she stopped to collect a few. They smelled of the odd, runny tree resin Caradoc used to polish his longbow, of the time after it rains, of warm skin. She felt an invader all of a sudden, and dropped her bouquet, hurrying forward.

It was perhaps ten minutes before she found him. She approached as a hawk, unsure to what degree he would have fought off the illusion by now. Her battle with phantom Flemeth had not been trivial, and the element of surprise might be welcome. There was a clearing, by a babbling brook; perhaps that was the music that had led him here.

He sat waist deep in the stream, naked except for his smallclothes. Morrigan had never seen his vallaslin in its entirety - it ended mid-way down his upper arm, and snaked across the top of his chest. She felt no particular sense of intrusion now; they were not modest around one another in reality.

In his arms lay another Dalish, with much less extensive vallaslin - where Caradoc had half his face and a good chunk of his torso covered in blue ink, this one's design was on his forehead only, though no less elaborate. Caradoc had explained his tattoo to her, in passing; it was a tree, it referred to the balance of life and death, something he believed was prophetic, given his place as a Warden now. The two men were murmuring to one another, things she could not quite make out.

The other Dalish laughed, and Morrigan realised - _Ah. This is Tamlen._ Her friend had succumbed to the illusion, been deceived. Caradoc was washing Tamlen's hair with a gentility she had rarely seen outside of his treatment of their filthy mabari tagalong. He did it slowly, calmly, separating each little collection of strands and lavishing attention on them.

They spoke with one another from time to time, but what words they were saying were still not clear. Perhaps they were not even words, just reminding-sounds from the demon, sounds which approximated the way Caradoc and his old lover spoke. There was such peace on his face.

 _A false peace, that will kill us all._ She steeled herself, and prepared to make her closest companion miserable. Descending from her perch in the trees, she resumed her human form, striding towards Caradoc with determination.

"Caradoc, you must heed me. The figure before you is-"  
"-an illusion," said her friend, and looked up at her, smiling slightly. "Yes, I know."  
Morrigan was taken aback, though secretly a little relieved. She had hoped Caradoc would not fall so completely into this demon's trap. Hoped he would have a little more self-control.  
"You do?" Her voice was cautious.

"It's not him," said Caradoc, subduing the apparently upset Tamlen, who sought to draw him back further into the dream with kisses. He sighed slightly. "The vallaslin is wrong. Keeper Marethari taught us to memorise each other's vallaslin, because it is personalised, it's...like remembering someone's birthday. The spirits don't understand, say the Keepers, they don't understand recognising a face. They see people as energy, to them vallaslin is just a detail." He shushed Tamlen again, cradling him, stroking his shoulder softly.

"Well, then -" Morrigan scowled. "Why on earth are you still here?"  
"The spirit offered me something impossible," said Caradoc, seemingly ignoring her. "This whole place isn't right, but it's close enough. The sounds and the smells are rendered best, perhaps because they are most primal. What one sees depends so much upon perspective, I suppose, but smell; smell especially. It's strong." He looked at her. "You smelled things you remember too, I'll bet."  
Morrigan paused, frowning at him, and sat.   
"I did," she said. "Stew."

Caradoc just smiled at her again, a simple smile she had rarely seen him give. "I knew it wouldn't get you." He chuckled. "How bad was their Flemeth?"  
"Godawful," said Morrigan, and they smirked at one another. "She smiled."  
Caradoc merely grimaced at that.

There was a pause of maybe half a minute during which nothing was said. Caradoc stayed with Tamlen, holding him.  
"You know we must leave," said Morrigan eventually, with firmness but not without kindness.  
Caradoc looked up at her, nodded. He reached onto the riverbank, closing the false Tamlen's eyes with the ministrations of a lover. His fingers found the handle of his dagger, and in one swift motion he slit the dreamer's throat.

"You must think I am weak," he said, as Tamlen's life blood drained into the water, carried away by the current. "But it was enough. For just a little while, it was close enough."

He dressed, and the two of them prepared themselves. With Tamlen's death, two trees had grown into a solid whitewood arch. Caradoc and Morrigan walked together out of the dream.


End file.
